Since April 2022, Making Tax Digital for VAT has applied to all VAT-registered businesses, not just those over the threshold. The rules (VAT Notice 700/22 on gov.uk) require records to be kept in software the notice terms functional compatible: it can store the prescribed records and exchange data with HMRC via its API.
What must be recorded for purchases
For each supply you receive, the digital record must capture at minimum the time of supply, the value of the supply, and the amount of input tax you will claim. That trio is why an extraction tool that drops the invoice date, mangles the net amount, or loses the VAT figure isn't a cosmetic problem: it corrupts the statutory record itself.
Digital links, not retyping
Where data moves between software products on its way to the VAT return, the journey must be made of digital links. Manually retyping figures from one system into another breaks the chain; so does copy-and-paste as a routine step. A CSV file produced by one program and imported into another, however, counts as a digital link, which is precisely why NoticeDesk's exports target the import specification your accounts package publishes rather than a generic spreadsheet dump.
So how well an invoice is captured now matters for compliance, not just for tidy books. Checking the invoice before it enters the ledger is cheaper than amending the record after it has fed a return.
The same discipline now reaches Income Tax
Since 6 April 2026 the same shape of obligation applies to sole traders and landlords under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: one digital record per transaction (amount, date, category), digital links between products, and a quarterly update built from those records. The thresholds arrive in waves through 2028 and the penalty regime is points-based; the Income Tax piece walks through what that asks of your invoices and receipts. In both regimes NoticeDesk's place is the same: it reads and checks the document and hands a stored, typed record to your ledger through the exports; it doesn't file returns or send anything to HMRC; your ledger does.